


The Woman Who Cross Time and Space in a Single Leap

by if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mutant Reader, Reader Insert, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9221420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble/pseuds/if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble
Summary: You weren’t torn from life, you tore life into bits, fragments, pieces you could never put together completely.  Maybe it was different when you were a child, maybe you could stay in one place for some long time.  You remembered a few things: a house you could never leave, doors and windows locked at night, a mother who kissed your forehead often and a father who would come home, smelling like smoke, and lift you up in his arms, tossing you around like a doll.  But again, it was fragmented beyond understanding, confusing and unclear, like trying to solve a ten thousand piece puzzle with no image on it, only the beige brown of cardboard.You are beyond time, beyond space, a rip in linear understanding.  You met them throughout your life, here and there, assuming you'd never see the people who would become the Avengers ever again.  But, of course, your life is not one to make any sense, not one to be clear from any point of view.





	1. Chapter 1

You weren’t torn from life, you tore life into bits, fragments, pieces you could never put together completely.  Maybe it was different when you were a child, maybe you could stay in one place for some long time.  You remembered a few things: a house you could never leave, doors and windows locked at night, a mother who kissed your forehead often and a father who would come home, smelling like smoke, and lift you up in his arms, tossing you around like a doll.  But again, it was fragmented beyond understanding, confusing and unclear, like trying to solve a ten thousand piece puzzle with no image on it, only the beige brown of cardboard.  

The world to you wasn’t anything like the world was to other people, or at least how you understood other people explaining it in hushed tones, confusion evident.  Their world was linear.  It made sense, which to you was nonsense.  The whole world progressed in one time, and every street was consecutive and next to one another.  The coffee shop was down the block, on the opposite side of the street.  But when you went there, looking for the little cafe, you saw the street: the cold cobblestone with a thin lining of snow like cotton stretched thin before going into a spinning wheel, and then something else.  Halfway, maybe, the cobblestone suddenly became the hard ground, slick with dirt just becoming saturated enough to be mud.  And not thinking twice, you would cross from one world and one time into another, taking care to gather the typical long skirts of some puritan-era fashion in your hands. 


	2. The Men With Modesty and a War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You meet Bucky and Steve in the middle of their war.

You heard whispers among the pines.  At least it might have been whispers, the voices seemed so far away.  For a moment, you thought of turning back to the little street in early America, to find the little bakery or shop to get something warm.  It was colder here, but not so freezing.  But you couldn’t stand the stares back there, couldn’t stand how they looked at you, all ripped up from another fight.  You were never good at moral relativism, never good at adjusting to the social laws of any other place.  You picked a fight with a man who squeezed your ass in the bar, and you held you own, but your clothes didn’t: they were torn from when he tried to snatch you up.

As you stood there, you breathed out, watching your breath take form like a ghost and dissipate.  Then you take a few steps toward the noise, watching carefully for any sign that the world might switch into something different around you.  

Then you saw warm light, orange light.  1930’s or early 1940’s light bulbs, American, with any luck, you realized, the movable string ones used for military operations. In the late dusk, it played light with the shadows, and you were hopeful you could have a place to sit down there.  But you were cautious, always cautious.  How many times had you almost been shot?  Almost been killed?  Almost been stolen?

“Help,” you said, a little loudly, knowing it was best to come from a place of vulnerability than one of power around most men.  “Help me, please, someone!”

Suddenly the flap of a tent opened, one of those standing ones you could hold meetings in, and a blonde man looked out at you, in a dark green to match the pine trees.

“Please,” you murmured, just loud enough.

“What’s out there, Steve?” Asked a man from inside the tent.

“A girl, Buck,” the man said, leaving the tent, hand on his gun on his hip, but the other hand holding the flap open for the man inside the tent.

“A girl?  What do you mean, ‘a girl’?” The man echoed, and left the tent himself, bemusement turning to shock.  The other man was a tad shorter than the first, with brown hair that looked like it had been cut crudely with a knife and was still wet with sweat and rain.

The first man approached you, and you held up your hands, a universal sign of ‘I don’t have anything to hurt you with but my fists’.  

“How did you get here?” The blonde asked.

“Is she a spy?” The brunette asked.

You shook your head ‘no’, trying to get a feel for their vernacular before you forced your way in.

“How?  We are fifty miles from their nearest camp, at least, and undercover.  We dropped in last night.  How could they find us?” The blonde reasoned.

You searched your head, confused for a moment.  So many wars.  So much history.  All studied from a bookshop in some city in a year a little past 2103 CE.  Maybe that should mean something to you, that you never moved beyond 2103 CE.  You assumed it meant something about you, not about the world.  At least you hoped to every god and star in heaven, from the sun to the gods whose names were lost, only images carved in stone.  After all, you reasoned, you never could go earlier than 405 BCE, or so you had figured out with a lot of work in a museum with a professor named Erik who let you ask too many questions while never asking you any at all.

“Then how’d she get here?” The brunette probed.  “And what’s with the dress?”

You shook your head, knowing they wouldn’t understand.  “I’m lost.”

“You can say that again,” the brunette laughed.

“Are you doughboys?” You probed.  

“ ‘Doughboys’? Honey, you must be really lost.  Doughboys were the Americans back in the Great War,” the brunette chuckled.’

You thought this over.  “It’s the 1940’s then?”

“1943,” the blonde stated.

You shook your head again, replacing your hands into the folds of your skirts, “I know America, I was just there.  Can you please help me?”

“How?” The blonde asked.

You gestured to your clothes, ripped from the drunk man and your sense of upholding morals no matter the time or place.  Stubbornness was your hamartia, your fatal flaw, at least sometimes.  “I got in a bad fight with a man.  I need something to wear.  Maybe something to eat.  Maybe I promise I can walk through unharmed.”

The blonde man seemed to release some tension from his shoulders, taking his hand off the pistol on his hip.  “I’m Steve Rogers, ma’am.”

“Bucky,” the other man said, still standing to the side.  “There’s another man out there?”

“He’s gone now.  I ran pretty far.  Farther than he can follow,” you shrugged.

“How far?” Bucky probed.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” you sighed.  

“It’s only men’s clothes, here,” Steve said, walking back to his tent.  He held the flap for you, letting you enter ahead of him.  

Bucky picked up a paper package marker with some size and tossed it to you.  You caught it and ripped it open, looking over a tank top shirt, thick pants, and a coat that would do some good.  You started undressing without a second thought, when Steve cleared his throat and, blushing, left the tent, gesturing for Bucky to join him.  

Bucky stayed behind, averting his eyes.  “You and modesty don’t mix, I see.”

“Modesty is fine when you’re shy.  But I’m not.  I’ve been too far around the world,” You sighed, putting the pants on, realizing their fit was too big, and ripping a line of fabric from your old skirt to use as a belt.  This man was one who had to fight and defend and was getting used to that very quickly.  You knew the soft female thing wouldn’t work on him, and gave it up.

“How far around the world?” Bucky asked.

“You got a lot of questions, don’t you,” you noted, removing the binding you wore and tossing it on the table.  “You got a knife, Bucky?”  

He placed one on the table next to you, moving back again.  “I don’t trust you, you know.  Coming out of nowhere.”

You cut the breast covering for warmth from the corset binding, and then fixed it back on yourself.  You glanced up at Bucky as you did it, his eyes still turned away, a light blush on his cheeks, as he had seen your breasts swaying.  “It’s a human body, you know.  Nothing sexual to it.  People used to say that Amazon women cut off one breast to draw their bows more easily.  That’s a lie.  But what is true it that having your breasts out in the 1500’s was fashionable.  But 300 years later, a woman’s dress strap being askew in Sargent’s Madame X painting nearly caused a riot.  Modesty is a social construct, not to invalidate it.  But, if you knew why I know that, you’d trust me.” 

“And why do you know that?”

“Vonnegut isn’t a thing yet, is he?”  You wondered aloud.

“Who’s he? Another painter?” 

“Obviously you don’t know him.  Well he writes about a man unstuck in time.  I guess I’m like that.  Or not at all.  I perceive it all linearly, I don’t know my future, and I barely remember my past.”

“You aren’t making a lick of sense.” Bucky said.

“Doesn’t matter if you understand or not, doughboy,” you sighed, sliding on the shirt and buttoning up the coat.  You looked around, seeing some boots. 

“Yours?” You asked.

“No one’s,” Bucky said.  

You tried them on, noticing they were too big for you. 

“Too big?” Bucky asked.

“Too big,” you conceded, “bet you never heard a girl say that before.”

For the first time, he let out a bark of laughter.  “We’ll stuff them, only thing to do.” He grabbed some of the fabric from your skirt and began to rip it up.  You removed the boots and sat down on the floor.  He stuffed one boot as you watched, mirroring what he did.

“You do this before?” You asked.

“For Steve,” Bucky explained.

“That man?  He looks like he was born five feet tall,” you said, bemused.

“Things change, and science helps with that.” Bucky said.

You hummed, trying on the boots again and smiling, knowing they would be much more comfortable and much warmer.

“You might have saved me, Bucky,” you chuckled.

“From the cold, or that man out there?” Bucky asked.

“That man has probably been dead for two hundred fifty  years, now.” You sighed.

Bucky stared at you, more annoyed at this point than confused.  “What the hell are you saying?” 

“Could you believe your friend Steve got that big overnight?” You joked, trying to think of some apt comparison.

“I do, and he did,” Bucky stated.

You looked over the man, pursing your lips.  “Well, good on him.  If you can believe that, maybe you can believe me.”

“What’s there to believe?” Bucky asked.

At that moment, Steve came back in, holding three mugs with hot water, nothing else in it, and dried food rations.  He handed it all out and around.  All of you sat on the ground as you ate.

You ate furiously, like someone might take it away any minute.  The men glanced at you, initially shocked, then shook their heads and did the same.   

“Thank you,” you mumbled.  “Thank you.”  

“So you going to tell us how you got here?” Steve asked.

“We were just getting around to that,” Bucky smirked.

“Steve, you became the muscled Adonis overnight, right?” You shot back.

Steve shook his head at Bucky, “I did, maybe.”

“Well, hypothetically, say there was someone born.”

“Happens everyday,” Steve joked.

“Say this person was born and when they walk around, it’s all well and good, at least for a square mile, maybe.  And then they walk a little too far, and they come to-- say a street.  So they walk on the street.  But when they do, they realize they’ve stepped into a different place and different time.”

Bucky and Steve had both stopped eating.  They just stared at you.

“I think your world is all one time, mostly, and you have to walk to different places.  But I don’t.  I walk too far, and I’m in a different time and place. It’s all fragmented and weird.  And worst of all, very hard to map,” you joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“So where you came from-” Bucky started.

“A street in 1620’s America.  I got in a fight with a Puritan.  I mean, he’s wasn’t a good Puritan.  He was very drunk.”

Steve laughed a little at that. “Are you serious?”

You rolled your eyes, “Yes, I just showed up here in seventeenth century clothing because it seemed like an easy way to infiltrate your camp.”

“Well, you did become a super man over night,” Bucky commented.

“Superman?” You asked, “You know him?”

“Another painter?” Bucky joked.

“Nevermind,” you said.  

“So, you leaving us as soon as possible still?” Steve asked.  “Heading out into another space/time?”

You shrugged.  “I’m not a super person, so I’d not be worth anything in your war.  I’m just good at getting lost.” You stood, handing Steve the cup.

Bucky stood up, looking you over, up and down and up and down.  “Can I come with you?”

You smiled, “Alright, Bucky.”  You left the tent and turned towards the night sky, searching to seem if you could see a split somewhere.  Far off, it looked like the sky was shaking with a storm.

“You see that storm coming in?”  You asked Bucky.

“Storm?” He wondered.

“I guess not,” you smiled, and started walking towards it.  Half a mile out, maybe, in absolute quiet with Bucky, you saw the split.  There was gravel, a sunrise and a storm, and a building split in half as if god had sliced it like a cake. 

“What do you see?” Bucky asked.

“Somewhere else, maybe in the 1960’s,” you murmured.

“Twenty years from now?” Bucky wondered.

“Maybe thirty,” you said, as a car drove right towards you then seemed to unravel in front of you.

“Time to say our goodbyes?” Bucky asked.

“With all luck, it won’t be a goodbye for the rest of our lives,” you mentioned.  

You turned towards Bucky, and hugged him close, smiling a little.

“Thank you,” you murmured, into his ear.  “For walking me.  For not shooting me.  For stuffing my shoes.”

“Can I ask you one thing, before you go?” Bucky mumbled to you, not letting go yet.

“What’s that?”

“What’s your name?” 

“Y/N.” You said, softly, pulling away from him.

“See you some day, Y/N,”  Bucky said.  “If the war doesn’t kill me.”

“I’ve seen seven wars, and I always think it’s odd.  Some people blame the war and the circumstance.  Some people blame the other people, the ones they fought with or the ones they fought.  Says a lot, don’t it?”

“And who do you blame in the end?” Bucky asked you.

“I blame myself, for not fighting,” you shrugged.  “Goodbye, Bucky.  Be good to yourself, and be good to Steve.”  And you waved as you left one world for another.

"Goodbye, Y/N," Bucky said, sticking a hand up in the air.

You waved back, and you walked onto the gravel.  To Bucky, it seemed like you just stepped out of existence in the blink of an eye.  Even expecting it in this weird goddamn world where Steve grew two feet in a day, it still took his breath away.


End file.
